The Architects of On-Screen Style: Lauren Conrad

On-screen fashion has become as paramount to a film or a TV show's aesthetic as its location. Manhattan's bustling cityscape may have been the fifth girlfriend in Carrie Bradshaw's 'Sex and the City' quartet, but her enviable, informed, and idiosyncratic wardrobe was the (oversize) rose pinned to the series' lapel. Fashion—and personal style, especially—has become inextricable from our favorite on-screen characters. And an outfit's psychological underpinnings reveal as much about a character as what she says or does. To celebrate the women who paved the way for the Blair Waldorfs, the Olivia Popes, and the Pretty Little Liars, we'll be chatting with a different architect of on-screen style from the past 25 years—be she The Muse, The Real Girl, The Shopper, The Rule Breaker, or The Spirit Animal—each day this week.

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In the four years since Lauren Conrad said goodbye to The Hills, she's cleverly turned her Champagne-and-pizza persona into a veritable empire: If we're not drooling over her Cinnabon-size topknots on her personal site or buying Turkish hand towels from her artisan-sourced e-tailer, The Little Market, we're fantasizing that the Paper Crown and LC Lauren Conrad for Kohls designer is our BFF. And perhaps that's been her secret power all along: Well before the rest of Tinseltown realized its appeal, Conrad understood that "style" is only the second half of "lifestyle." Here, in her own words, the reality TV vet talks lessons from the fashion closet, early aughts fashion mistakes, and making a life out of the only industry she's ever known:

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"I always knew that I liked the fashion industry and beautiful things, but I don't know that I fully had a grasp on what that meant exactly. At 17 years old, the idea of doing a show like [Laguna Beach] sounded fun. It was pretty simple for me. But I remember when I first signed up, my dad suggested that this could possibly lead to other things. And obviously the entertainment industry and the fashion industry are very much intertwined.

I still, to this day, hear girls saying that they wanted to get into fashion because of the show. I don't know that we even glamorized it at all—we definitely showed that you were stuck in a closet and you were reprimanded often—but it was a career that people didn't always think of right away. That said, I definitely wasn't a trendsetter. The early 2000s were an interesting period for fashion. [Laughs] And as much as I get shivers when I look at photos from that time, I'm comforted by the fact that most people standing around me were doing the same thing. It wasn't great, but I wasn't alone. It's just a part of being young that you sort of move together. It takes a very daring person to try a new trend when no one else is doing it. I think, if anything, I just had a more beachy, bohemian vibe that was maybe different from L.A.:that was sort of all I knew.

There was never any wardrobe involved with the show. After several seasons [on The Hills], it was actually starting to get difficult because you didn't want to wear the same outfit over again when you were filming. It's funny because I look back at the amount I used to spend on clothes and I can't believe it. I mean, some of the girls I think worked with stylists. If I had an event I would work with one, but for day-to-day shooting, it was all me. If I wasn't filming, I was shopping. I was shopping all the time. That was kind of cool because it helped me to develop my own style. It becomes less about, 'Is this cool? Will other people like this?' and more, 'I like this. I don't like that. I can wear this shape. I can't wear that shape.' You are doing it so often that you really start to follow your own instincts, which is nice. It's different now, because day-to-day I'm at my office working and nobody cares. I only wear makeup when I have to.

I definitely had a lot of moments where I thought, 'I don't know if I can do this.' [Being on those shows] was always accompanied with a lot of stress, a lot of questioning myself, and wondering if I was really cut out to work in the industry. But it always came together for me during fashion week. Not during all of the craziness and all of the press, but rather as soon as the [fashion] show started. There is just some sort of magic to it. And what I think was really cool for me is when the curtain was pulled back and I got to see everything. I saw everything that led up to it—how people were scrambling until the last minute, how much work it was, how half the things were pinned in place. And it didn't ruin it for me. There is still something so amazing about the creative process coming together. After all these years, I still want to make beautiful things."